According to the Russian newspaper “Izvestia”, the Russian Basketball Federation is aiming to replace David Blatt with an elite coach, with the main candidate being non other than Zeljko Obradovic.
The report should be taken with a grain of salt since Obradovic has repeatedly rejected many offers from various Basketball Federations and stated he is not interested in working on national level, ever since the catastrophic Eurobasket 2005.
Additionally to that the author of the article claims the Serbian coach was in talks with Galatasaray in the summer, clearly incapable of distinguishing the different between Anadolu Efes and Galatasaray. Also, officially, the Russian Basketball Federation have declined to comment on the rumour.
However, and according to “Izvestia” article there are talks going on between the two sides, while the Russian Basketball Federation President Aleksandr Krasnenkov has claimed that there will be a new coach by December 25. The federation is looking for an elite foreign coach who will have a Russian assistant (could be one of Bazarevitch, Pashutin or Karasev).
